Govt to revamp laws on intellectual property rights
JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia's laws regarding intellectual property rights will soon be adjusted to standards stipulated in the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) under the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Director General of Copy Rights and Intellectual Property at the Ministry of Justice A. Zen Umar Purba said on Tuesday his office had just completed an evaluation of the planned revisions to the existing Copy Rights Law, Patent Law and Trademark Law.
"We have also prepared three draft bills on Industrial Design, Layout Design of Integrated Circuits and Undisclosed Information," Zen said at an intellectual property seminar organized by the Faculty of Law at the University of Indonesia.
"We hope the draft laws and revisions of existing laws will have been enacted by January, 2000, the year TRIPs come into effect."
Other speakers at the seminar included the dean of the University of Indonesia's Faculty of Law, Abdul Bari Azed, the president of the Indonesian Intellectual Property Foundation, Chandra N. Darusman, and several business leaders.
Chandra said the intellectual property bill needed further promotion to increase public awareness of the importance of copyrights, patents and trademarks.
"Public awareness of the concept that intellectual property has a price needs to be propagated," he said.
YKCI, founded in the early nineties, is a nonprofit organization for the protection and administration of the rights of composers and publishers of music.
The organization charges fees to businesses that make use of music to support their business activities.
They include television and radio stations, restaurants and transportation companies.
"We collected about Rp 3 billion (about US$448,000) in fees in 1998, as compared to Rp 3.2 billion in the previous year," Chandra said.
He said fees collected were distributed proportionately to composers and publishers of the music.
Zen said his office had since 1998 worked hard to publicize intellectual property rights through various forums such as discussions and seminars involving people from all walks of life.
"The Ministry of Justice will increase cooperation with the national police to strengthen law enforcement against breaches in intellectual property rights."
He said revenue collected by his office from applicants of intellectual property rights had steadily increased by an annual average of 120 percent since 1994.
He said his directorate general had also ratified five international conventions regarding intellectual property rights in anticipation of the free trade era.
The five conventions are the Paris Convention for the Production of Industrial Property, Patent Cooperation Treaty, Trademarks Law Treaty, Bern Convention for the Production of Literary and Artistic Work and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty. (udi)